Porous particles or pores of a porous structure can be classified into three (3) types of pores, i.e., micro-pores (less than 2 nm), meso-pores (2 nm to 50 nm), and macro-pores (in excess of 50 nm). Since a porous particle whose pore size is controllable can be used in various fields including catalysts, isolation systems, low dielectric materials, hydrogen storage materials, photonic crystals, electrodes and others, they have been recently spotlighted.
The porous particle or structure can be produced by using various materials such as metal oxide, a semiconductor, metal, a polymer, carbons, or others, and especially, a porous carbon particle can be widely used in various fields since they have merits in an excellent surface property, ionic conductivity, corrosion resistance, and low producing costs and so on.
However, the porous carbon particle exhibits significant difference in efficiency depending on distribution, a size, connectivity, a surface area, and a surface property of pores and others, and in particular, a size of a pore needs to be controlled depending on purposes of use of the porous carbon particle. For example, in case of use for an electrode of a fuel cell, using a porous carbon particle having an overly small pore size increases a specific surface area, and thereby, increasing a loading amount of a catalyst material, but causes the following problem: delivering and diffusion of a reaction gas or others become difficult, and since polymer electrolyte cannot penetrate into the inside of the pore, catalyst use efficiency is decreased, and eventually, a fuel cell having improved performance cannot be produced.
Meanwhile, in order to produce the porous carbon particle, using a template has been conventionally suggested, and for the template, spherical silica, or colloidal crystalline array based on an arranged aggregate of a latex polymer nanoparticle has been used. For example, Korean Patent Application Publication No. 2003-0087761 describes “electrocatalysts for a fuel cell supported by a porous carbon structure having regularly 3-dimensionally arranged spherical pores of a uniform diameter and their preparation method.” Specifically, the '761 application describes a method for preparing porous carbon particles by using a template. Further, in recent, there have been efforts to synthesize a porous carbon particle including regularly arranged pores through template cloning using zeolite, a meso porous material, and a colloidal crystal, but when these conventional techniques were used, there was the problem that pores were not regularly arranged and distributed within the produced porous carbon particle, and the pore size could not be controlled according to purposes of use. In addition, when the porous carbon particle was produced by using a template as described above, there were disadvantages in that simplification of processes and reduction of costs were difficult.